Jesus is coming, look busy!

Sunday 30 November 2025
An Advent sermon by Kenneth Padley

Readings: Isaiah 2.1-5; Matthew 24.36.44

It was one in the morning on 16^th April 1694 when John Mason saw Jesus Christ. Jesus met Mason in his bedroom in Water Stratford, a small Buckinghamshire village of 100 souls where Mason had been Vicar for twenty years. Jesus didn’t say anything to John Mason during their encounter. He didn’t need to. Mason knew exactly what the vision meant. He interpreted the appearance as nothing less than the Second Coming, the beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth. Furthermore, Mason was convinced that Jesus would appear again very shortly, either on Ascension Day or at Pentecost, when he predicted the Last Judgment would begin.

Quite what was going on in Mason’s head is hard to analyse, now three centuries from the event. We could dismiss the story as the delusions of a dying man – Mason had only six weeks left on earth. That said, Mason had hitherto been lucid and creative. He authored a great poem about the nature of God, part of which is still sung today as the hymn, ‘How shall I sing that majesty?’ Moreover, Mason’s nocturnal encounter resonates with those Christians down the ages whom theologians call ‘millenarians’ – people with an ardent anticipation of imminent end times.

Advent is about anticipation. As we munch through the chocolates in the calendar or burn down the stripes on the candle, we are waiting for Christmas, our annual commemoration of God’s justice and salvation breaking into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. But we are also waiting for Christ’s return in glory – the Second Coming, the topic of our gospel text today. Shortly before the section which we heard, Jesus says of the end times that25 ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then… all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see “the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” with power and great glory.’ (Matthew 24.29-30)

Fired by texts like this, millennial fervour goes back to the age of the Bible itself. The earliest Christians thought that the end times were just around the corner. This is why they didn’t write gospel lives of Jesus until a generation after his death, at which point they realized Jesus might not be returning as quickly as they had hoped. Since then, through the centuries, many have tried to read the signs of the times and forecast the date of Doomsday.

• Back in the eighth century, the Venerable Bede, a man remembered by posterity as the first historian of the English people, was more consumed by work as a chronographer. Bede was interested in history because he thought he was living in the last age of creation and tried to read from events when the age of heaven would begin.
• Five centuries later, another major figure in the millenarian tradition arose in the person of Joachim of Fiore. Joachim was an eccentric monk from southern Italy who felt that his age was on the cusp of apocalyptic change. Joachim drew whacky illustrations from the book Revelation and played games with words and numbers to try to predict the future. Strange though they sound to twenty-first ears, Joachim’s views proved remarkably resilient and influential in the centuries which followed his death.

And please don’t think these ideas have gone away because the world has become ‘modern’. Only a few years ago an American preacher called Harold Camping whipped up fervour and folly with his prediction that the world would end on 21^st May 2011. When the deadline passed, Camping pushed the date back five months to 21^st October – yet here we still are, twiddling our fingers fourteen years later.

A survey in 2022 by the Pew Research Centre showed that 37% of Americans think that the second coming of Jesus will or may occur during their lifetime.[1] What impact must it have on a country’s outlook when over a third of the population thinks that the world as we know it will end within a few years or decades? Yet even we, as Christians on this more cautious side of the Pond, have an advent duty to look for Jesus’ Second Coming. I’d like to suggest that two qualities might characterise our expectations.

First, a sense of realism. We have very little understanding of the future. God develops and disposes his plans as and when he wants.

• So we shouldn’t pry into details that are not our business. People like Harold Camping who do this find themselves frustrated.
• And as we spurn gullibility about the calendar, we should also adopt a healthy skepticism towards individuals who promise more than they can deliver – the false messiahs of our own age. I’m thinking here not just about religious figures but about cultural icons and flamboyant politicians – of all colours – whose promotional wrappings far exceed their potential.
• What we should remember – and Advent is a good time to do this – is that God one day will complete her plan, so we should be watchful. This is exactly where Jesus leaves us at the close of Matthew chapter 24.

Second, it is worth reflecting on the way in which Christ arrives. When we start to consider this, we begin to appreciate that there is not one Advent, but many. Christ’s dawn is manifold. Quite what form the end times will take is over to God. What we do know is that Jesus becomes real – here and now – in everyday lives. He becomes real when people hear the gospel preached. He becomes real when people see examples of Christian living in others. If, as Advent people, we are prepared for Christ’s extraordinary Second Coming, we should certainly be alert to his breaking into the everyday things around us.

An anonymous poem from the age of John Mason warns against complacency in this regard. It contrasts the preparation we would make if a monarch came to dinner with our inattentiveness towards the ruler of all:

Yet if His Majesty, our sovereign lord,
Should of his own accord
Friendly himself invite,
And say ‘I’ll be your guest to-morrow night,’
How should we stir ourselves, call and command
All hands to work! ‘Let no man idle stand!

‘Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall;
See they be fitted all;
Let there be room to eat
And order taken that there want no meat.
See every sconce and candlestick made bright,
That without tapers they may give a light.

‘Look to the presence: are the carpets spread,
The dazie o’er the head,
The cushions in the chairs,
And all the candles lighted on the stairs?
Perfume the chambers, and in any case
Let each man give attendance in his place!’

Thus, if a king were coming, would we do;
And ’twere good reason too;
For ’tis a duteous thing
To show all honour to an earthly king,
And after all our travail and our cost,
So he be pleased, to think no labour lost.

But at the coming of the King of Heaven
All’s set at six and seven;
We wallow in our sin,
Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn.
We entertain Him always like a stranger,
And, as at first, still lodge Him in the manger.

In the film Johnny English, the hapless secret agent played by Rowan Atkinson accuses the Archbishop of Canterbury of having a tattoo on his bottom which reads ‘Jesus is coming: look busy’. With due embarrassment to the Archbishop, Atkinson’s accusation proves false.

However, the statement about Jesus is true. Jesus is coming, often arriving in simpler ways than those eschatological Americans expect. Yes, we long for the Second Coming. But as we attend to the metaphorical skies, we look also to the one who stands at the door of our hearts, and knocks.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/